Eunice woke up early, not surprising since she’d gone to bed early. As she came to, her first thought was similar to her first thoughts in the morning for the last two years: I’d better check on Jeff.

She was halfway to the door before she remembered what had happened the day before: Jeff wouldn’t have to be checked on ever again. It was going to be very, very hard to get used to that. It was almost physically difficult for her to not turn to Jeff’s room when she went out her bedroom door, but to go the other way toward the bathroom. What with everything the day before, including the examination of her own memories, she hadn’t gotten around to taking a shower the evening before like she usually did, so she decided that now would be a good time. She turned back into her room for a moment to grab a robe, then before going to the bathroom took a peek into the living room and the kitchen to find that Eric wasn’t there; it seemed likely he was still asleep.

She took her time in the bathroom – after all, if Eric got up he wouldn’t be needing it since he always used the one upstairs – then went back down the hall in her robe to get dressed in slacks and a sweater, as usual. With that done, she went out into the kitchen, and noticed that Eric still wasn’t up. She wondered for a moment if she ought to check on him, but decided not to, since it was still well before the time he normally got up. Except for the light in the kitchen the house was dark, and it was very quiet – quieter somehow than normal.

A cup of coffee would taste good, she thought. Eric usually brewed it a little stiff, but over the past couple years she’d learned to like it that way. There was probably no point in starting a serious breakfast until he got up, so she decided a granola bar would be enough to hold her until then.

The memories of last night were still on her mind; they’d been pleasant ones, of the good times back when she and Jeff had been starting out, and they were still on her mind now. When the coffee was ready she sat down at the kitchen table, took a sip from her cup, and let herself surrender to them again.

After talking it over a bit, Jeff and Eunice decided they’d better go over to Meridian and see Donna – and to make the trip in the Nash, just to not complicate things with her by showing up in the Triumph. The Nash proved to be unbelievably quiet and smooth riding after over two weeks of riding in the noisy, hard-riding roadster; they decided that while the sports car was fun, they appreciated the creature comforts of the sedan.

They had little doubt that Donna was not happy with what had happened with Eric; even his note told them that, so it appeared it had been written after he’d broken the news to her. As luck had it, she was home when they arrived in Meridian. “I wasn’t expecting the two of you,” she said when she came to the door. “How was the honeymoon?”

“We had a good time,” Eunice told her. “We spent a lot of it doing, uh, honeymoon things.”

“I’ll bet you did,” she said without showing a great deal of enthusiasm. “I suppose you heard about Eric?”

“Just now,” Eunice replied. “Donna, I don’t know what I can say, other than I’m sorry.”

“Well, I’m sorry too,” she sighed. “I don’t know what he could have done about it, but I wish he hadn’t waited until just about the last damn minute to tell me. He gave me this big song and dance about how he didn’t think he was the right guy for me and how I’d do better if I looked elsewhere. He said something about his dad dying in the war had made him not want to put me in the same position his mother had been in. Then he was gone. He didn’t even give me much chance to talk to him. I haven’t heard a word from him since.”

To Eunice, that sounded like a pretty good capsule summary of what Eric had said in his note. “I knew he had some sensitive spots about his dad dying in the war and the trouble it had caused him,” Jeff said. “We even talked about it a couple of times at school. But I didn’t think it was that bad. I guess sometimes you just don’t know.”

“I should have seen this coming,” she sighed. “He’s been very distant the last couple months. I thought maybe you guys getting married would have made him think about it a little, but if anything it went the other way.”

“So what are you going to do?” Eunice asked.

“There’s not much I can do,” Donna shook her head. “I mean, I think we could have worked it through, even if he had to spend his time in the Army, but he didn’t want to hear a thing about it from me. He told me to go look for someone else, so I guess that means he’s not all that interested in me, and I guess that’s just what I’ll have to do.”

“I’m sorry, Donna,” Jeff told her. “I don’t know what else I can say. Eric may be my friend but I know he has his own ways of looking at things.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter now. The way he did it, I don’t have much else I can do. I didn’t think I was going to be able to get him to marry me right away, even though I wanted to. But I never dreamed it would go this bad. I guess the best thing I can do is to just try to move ahead without him. I’ve been putting out more applications looking for teaching work, and I’m getting a few nibbles.”

“Maybe that’s good news,” Eunice said. “You can get on with your life, and a new job somewhere else might be a big help.”

“That’s what I keep thinking,” Donna agreed. “I’ve got a place way up north that wants me to come up and interview. It’s a heck of a long way from here, but I keep thinking the change of scenery will do me good. But hey. Let’s not just stand here by the door. Let’s go down to the ice cream place, and you can tell me all about your honeymoon. At least the parts you’re willing to talk about.”

Eventually Jeff and Eunice started for Wychbold. “In a way I’d hate to see her get a job way up north somewhere,” Eunice said as Jeff drove them down the road. “In spite of everything, Donna is still my friend, and I’d really hate it if I didn’t see her very often. We wouldn’t get to if she’s living hundreds of miles away.”

“Yeah, and I’m going to miss Eric, too. He’s been my best friend for the last four years, and it’s going to seem strange to not have him around. I’ve come to depend on him a lot.”

“We’ve each come to depend on both of them a lot,” she agreed. “I guess that means we’re going to have to learn to get along without them.”

“It may not be all bad. It may just mean you and I need to learn to depend on each other more.”

“I suppose you’re right. It still seems strange the way Eric handled the Triumph, though.”

“It does to me, too,” Jeff agreed. “But then, if he was keeping his getting drafted a secret, he couldn’t have done it much of any other way, and it might be hard for him to deal with the car while he’s in the Army. I’ll tell you what, I’m thinking maybe we ought to just think in terms of keeping it for him for when he gets back.”

“It didn’t sound like he wanted it back.”

“Not to me either, but things could change. Don’t get me wrong, I like the car and I liked the trip we just did in it, but at the same time I’m thinking it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to try and drive it every day. We could probably get away with it in the summer, but when winter gets here . . . ”

“You might have a point,” she agreed. “There’s a limit to how much fun it can be.”

“Exactly. Let’s try not to drive it regularly. I suppose it can go back under a tarp out at the company. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t get it out if we wanted to drive it somewhere instead of the Nash, since it’s going to be our car, after all. But it’ll be there if Eric wants it back.”

“That’s probably not a bad idea,” she agreed. “Maybe you should write and tell him about it, at least if we ever get an address for him.”

“I think so,” Jeff agreed absently. “It would only be the right thing to do.”

Not unexpectedly, it took Eunice and Jeff a while to fall into the routine of living together on a daily basis. Granted, they’d managed to spend a night together a few times, but that had been unusual occasions when their minds had mostly been on one thing. The day-to-day lives of a married couple were something quite different, and it took a while to get everything worked out.

On Monday Jeff went to work at the company. Things were a little different than they had been when he’d worked there summers in the past; for one thing, he was full time now – more or less full time, anyway, since in the heating oil business summer is the slow time. Still, there was work to do and it kept him busy, and it wasn’t the handyman sorts of jobs he’d done there in the past. This was more about learning about handling the office and managing the business, and his father passed along several minor jobs that he’d been doing by himself, just to give Jeff time to get his feet under him.

Jeff had already known a great deal about the fuel oil business from having watched his father and working around the edges of it for a few years, but now it seemed different since he was really a part of the business.

One of the jobs Jeff’s father passed along was putting together a campaign to sell “summer fills” of fuel oil at a somewhat reduced price, just to keep things from getting desperately busy quickly when heating season rolled around. Another was a special deal to encourage people to convert their heating from coal to fuel oil; many people in the area had already done so, but there were still some holdouts. This involved a cooperative deal with a local furnace company, and it was more complicated than could be solved with a couple of phone calls.

What with everything else, Jeff managed to stay relatively busy, although he knew he’d be a lot busier when fall rolled around.

Eunice had a few days’ work to finish up moving into the house and getting things arranged – they hadn’t been able to do everything they’d wanted to in the last mad rush of a week before the wedding. But soon she worked her list down to virtually nothing and quickly found herself getting bored.

Being bored was no fun, and after she spent some time talking it over with Jeff, she decided to look for work. It took a little nosing around and a few good words from Jeff’s father, but she soon found a job as a teller at the local bank. It was not exactly what she’d thought about doing, but the job was all right as far as she was concerned; it gave her a chance to learn more about her new home town and the people who lived there.

It was just as well that she took the job, since she and Jeff were soon faced with some major expenses. They’d already decided they were going to drive the Triumph as little as possible, and it was soon sitting under a fitted tarp in one of the buildings out at the oil company. They could get it out easily if they really wanted to use it for something, and a couple times they took weekend trips with it, but most of the time it went unused.

While they could usually get along with one car, at times it was inconvenient, especially when Jeff had to work outside the area and either go to work early or get home late. It wasn’t bad in the summer since they were close enough that Eunice could walk to or from work, but if she had to get groceries, or the weather was bad, it wasn’t quite as convenient. Things were likely to get worse as time went on.

Before too long they talked it over and decided to ask Eunice’s father to keep an eye out for a good, economical car for her. It didn’t need to be anything grand, but did need to be fairly reliable. It didn’t take her father long to come up with the ideal car: a light blue 1956 Volkswagen “bug.” Paying for it wasn’t a big deal, partly because he made her a near-cost deal on it, but also because they dipped into the money they’d received at the wedding to pay for it. It proved to be a good little car for them.

That was good, because the Nash was starting to show signs of age. One of the reasons Jeff had been willing to consider taking the Triumph on their honeymoon was that the Nash was clearly getting elderly, and nearing a hundred thousand miles. In those days, a six-year-old car with that many miles on it was ready for replacement, and might not last too much longer. Jeff could see that the car was smoking and using a lot of oil, which meant that at a minimum it would be needing a ring job, which meant a major engine teardown.

Of course, Eunice’s dad was the one to consult on that one, too, and it didn’t take him long to reach a conclusion: “You’d better plan on getting rid of this thing while you still can. It’s going to be needing a major engine rebuild, and that’s going to cost you more than the car is worth.” He added that while he was willing to keep an eye open for a good used car, it might be a better idea to think in terms of a new car that could be used as a main car. The VW could be used as Eunice’s work car and for odds and ends.

That sent them car shopping. This was toward the end of the era when sedans tended to run to huge over-chromed barges, Jeff was sensitive to it after having driven the Nash for several years. However, with his experience of the Nash he was also comfortable with American Motors products. The Rambler was one of the few cars of that era that could have been called mid-sized, and to Jeff’s eye it wasn’t as ugly as some of the other popular cars of the day.

It didn’t hurt that it was right toward the model-year end, so the 1959 models were considerably marked down on price. Some dickering with the dealer over in Hawthorne resulted in a good deal and a reasonable trade-in on the Nash; when it was over with, Jeff and Eunice drove home in a new white Rambler six-cylinder, a comfortable car with the usual good American Motors gas mileage. The only problem was that it involved car payments, which slowed the rate they were putting their money away for the eventual down payment on a new house.

Toward the end of August they finally heard from Eric: just a quick post card to tell them that he’d finished his basic training at Fort Knox and it had gone pretty well. He’d had a chance to come home on leave following basic but he’d turned it down, and was now on his way to advanced training at Ft. Benning. That wasn’t much news, and it left them with a lot of questions.

“I’m beginning to think he meant it when he said he wasn’t going to be home on leave if he could avoid it,” Jeff told Eunice after they got the card. “I’m beginning to wonder when we’re going to see him again. Probably not soon.”

“Probably not,” she agreed. “I guess he’s still avoiding Donna. I thought maybe his being in the Army would have changed his mind a little.”

“I guess not, but at least she seems to be getting over it some.”

“She says she is, but I don’t know how much I believe her. Maybe her new job will help her get over him.”

“I sure hope so. Maybe we’re going to have to take a run up to see her sometime, just so she doesn’t feel too lonely.”

The request for an interview that Donna had mentioned back when Jeff and Eunice returned from their honeymoon had been from Hughesville, a relatively small town on Lake Huron not far from the Mackinac Bridge – in other words, a good three hundred miles from Meridian and her parents. For that reason she’d wanted the job badly, even though the pay was mediocre. She wound up getting an offer to teach second grade, and was happy to get it; to her mother’s displeasure, she accepted the offer immediately. She’d been off within a couple days to arrange for an apartment, and actually wound up renting a small house, smaller even than Jeff and Eunice’s. After a couple trips back and forth hauling things, she was getting settled in there, working on getting lesson plans and the like together. From what Jeff and Donna could tell, she was happy with the job, and perhaps it would help her put Eric behind her a little.

By the time the leaves started to turn Jeff and Eunice were used to being married. They liked it; after they’d gotten over their initial shy reserve of each other a year and a half before – which hadn’t taken long – they’d realized they liked each other a lot. Now that they were married, it proved they had few differences and they were getting along very well, with few things that could even be called disagreements. From here and there they’d heard stories of newlywed couples who’d had much worse times getting used to each other; they had few complaints, other than the wish they’d done it sooner.

About the time the leaves started to come down they heard from Eric again. At least this time it was an honest letter:

Hey, I know I haven’t been real good about writing to you two, but the Army keeps us busy. I suppose you haven’t had a lot of time for reading anyway, since you probably have other things you like to do together, but you probably have to come up for air once in a while.

I don’t think I told you much about basic training. It wasn’t all that hard but they treat you like dirt, and I was glad to have it over with. After that I was sent to Ft. Benning for advanced infantry training, so I figured I’d be carrying a rifle for the next couple of years. But I’ve learned that the Army likes to surprise you, and they sure surprised me. After I got done with the course at Benning I wound up getting sent to Germany. It was a long trip on a troop ship and it wasn’t a bit like when I was out at sea with Scott and his girlfriends, but we finally made it in. I figured I’d get assigned to some infantry outfit, but no – I’m now a postal clerk at a post in the southern part of Germany, Bad Würslingen. It’s a dull job but better than carrying a rifle.

The neat part is that it’s not far from the Bavarian Alps. There are mountains all over the place to the south of here, and I’ve already done some climbing. It’s a whole different type of climbing than I did in the ’Gunks a year ago last summer, but I’m learning something about it and like it so far.

I hope Donna is doing well. I haven’t heard a word about her, of course, and maybe that’s good. At least I hope she’s getting over me and getting on with her life.

I’m sorry I wasn’t around for when you got back from your honeymoon since I’d guess you have some stories to tell. I wouldn’t mind hearing them but it’s going to be a while before I see you. You can go ahead and write me here – I wouldn’t mind having some news from you, and since I’m a postal clerk I suppose it wouldn’t hurt if I got some mail.

I hope the two of you are enjoying being married to each other. There’s a part of me that envies you a lot for that – but then, there’s a part of me that says I’m just as glad I’m not married, at least not right now. But have fun, you two – not that I’d expect you to do any different.

“It sounds like he’s doing all right,” Eunice commented after she’d read the letter.

“Sounds like it to me, too,” Jeff agreed. “There’s a lot more I’d like to know, but that was a pretty newsy letter, for him anyway. At least we have a mailing address for him now. I need to write and tell him about what we decided about the Triumph.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t have heard that Donna is teaching up in Hughesville, either. He might like to know that. At least that would tell him that she’s moving on with her life.”

“I think he’d like to know,” he nodded. “I suppose that means I ought to get a letter off to him.”

“Why don’t you do it?” she suggested. “After you get it done, I’ll add my version and maybe talk about some of the things you didn’t cover.”

“Might as well,” he agreed, “and I might as well do it while I’m thinking about it.”

Jeff got out the old portable typewriter he’d used for writing papers for school, and started in on a long, newsy letter to his best friend, while Eunice got started making supper. After a while she sat down at the kitchen table where Jeff was working and asked, “Jeff, what would you think about calling Donna to pass along what Eric wrote in his letter?”

“Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea in one way,” he said after a moment’s thought. “On the other hand, it might not be a good idea, either. He didn’t say if he’d written to her and he may not have. Maybe it wouldn’t be a good thing to rub her nose in the fact that he wrote to us and not to her.”

“That might be true,” Eunice conceded. “And I don’t have any idea of how she’s doing up there in the north woods. We haven’t seen her since August, and we’ve heard very little. Maybe next weekend we could get in the Rambler and take a run up to see her. I’ll bet she’d enjoy seeing us, and we could sort of sound her out before we tell her about Eric.”

“That might be an idea,” he agreed. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to just drop in on her, though. We ought to call first. And I agree that we ought to take the Rambler on that trip. It’s getting a little too cold to want to drive very far in the Triumph, and I’m beginning to think the heater in the Volkswagen is nothing much, either.”

It didn’t take a lot of discussion before Eunice was on the phone to Donna. There was a little bit of catching up to be done before Eunice broached the idea of driving up to see her the following weekend; Jeff didn’t pay attention since he was still working on the typewriter.

They didn’t let the call go on too long – long-distance calls were expensive, after all – but afterwards Eunice said, “That was worth the effort.”

“So are we on for next weekend?”

“Yes, she said she’d like to see us, but she asked us not to come up Friday. It seems she has a date.”

“A date? Maybe she’s starting to get over Eric after all.”

“I didn’t get a lot of information, but it seems this guy is a teacher at the high school. I couldn’t tell if this is anything serious or what, but at least she’s not sitting at home moping after Eric all the time.”

“That is good news, I guess,” Jeff nodded. “I’ll pass that along to Eric. Maybe it’ll relieve his mind a little, too.”

The Rambler proved to be a comfortable ride for the trip up to see Donna. Parts of the drive were four-lane, but in other places the new highways were still under construction, so it was well that Jeff and Eunice left early. But it was an interesting drive to a place they hadn’t been before, so they enjoyed it.

It proved that Donna’s house was out at the edge of town with a lot of woods around it. Smaller than Jeff and Eunice’s place, but it seemed to be in good shape and cozy enough for her.

Of course, Eunice was interested in how Donna’s date had gone the night before. “Not bad,” Donna replied. “Frank isn’t quite the guy that Eric was, but he seems all right. There’s no telling if it’s going anywhere, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

“Do you like living up here?”

“Oh, it’s all right,” Donna said. “I miss having the two of you around, and that makes it hard. On the other hand, it’s far enough away that my mother isn’t bugging me about Jerry Peters all the time. If this works out with Frank, and I’m not saying it’s going to, then I don’t think this will be a bad place to live, though it’s even worse for being out in the middle of nowhere than it is at home.”

“It doesn’t seem like a bad place,” Jeff commented.

“It could be worse,” Donna sighed. “The people are all right, although I don’t know what it’ll be like when winter sets in. Some people seem to like the winter up here, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see about that, just like I’m going to have to see what’ll happen with Frank. I really wish I was sharing this place with Eric, but I guess that’s something from out of my past that’s not likely to happen. I guess that was just something from our college days, and I’ll have to put it behind me whether I want to or not.”

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